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Arch Sex Behav (2017) 46:629630 DOI 10.1007/s10508-016-0892-2
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10508-016-0892-2&domain=pdf
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What Asexuality Tells Us About Sexuality
Anthony F. Bogaert1
Received: 17 October 2016 / Accepted: 24 October 2016 / Published online: 10 November 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Brotto and Yule (2016) do a service to the research and clinical communityinterestedinsexualitybyprovidingathoughtfuland systematic review on how best to conceptualize asexuality. Their article adds to other recent reviews and theoretical papers onasexuality(e.g.,Bogaert,2006,2015,2016;Gressgard,2013; Hinderliter, 2013). Brotto and Yules review is important in a number of ways, including helping clinicians to think critically about whether or not the absence of sexual attraction should be diagnosedasasexualdisorder.However,mycommentshereare restricted to how Brotto and Yules article has implications for another important issue: How conceptualizing asexuality helps to better understandor least view differentlysexuality, an issue I have addressed elsewhere in my own work on asexuality (Bogaert, 2012a, 2015).
As an example, Brotto and Yule raise an interesting theoretical question on the nature of sexual orientation, that is,Might asexuality represent another dimension on which orientation is based, such that subjective falls at one end (e.g., the individual withasenseofidentityasasexualagent)andnon-subjectivefalls at the other end (e.g., the autochorissexual who experiences a complete identity-less sexuality).Their speculation on the relevance of subjectivity to ones sexual orientation emerges out of ndings that asexual people often do not have an identity (a self) that is connected to their fantasy/arousal during masturbation. As Brotto and Yule describe, Bogaert (2012a, b) noted
this identity-less sexuality and described it as autochorissex
ualism.
In this line of reasoning, Brotto and Yule also query how fantasy might function to elicit arousal in some asexual people: whether they [asexual people] are eliciting the fantasy simplyasa meansoffocusingattentiononanobject forthe purposes of becoming sexually aroused and having an orgasm (cf. Brotto, Knudson,...